thoughtful host or you would have offered me refreshment before this.'
Prentiss tried to bury the thought that came to him, to push it as far below the outer skin of his mind as he could. He said casually, 'I have something better than milk. Here, I'll get it for you.'
'Stay where you are. Call to your wife. She'll bring it.'
'But I don't want her to see you. It would frighten her.'
The elf said, 'You need feel no concern. I'll handle her so that she won't be the least disturbed.'
Prentiss lifted an arm.
The elf said, 'Any attack you make on me will be far slower than the bolt of electricity that will strike your wife.'
Prentiss' arm dropped. He stepped to the door of his study.
'Blanche!' he called down the stairs.
Blanche was just visible in the living room, sitting woodenly in the armchair near the bookcase. She seemed to be asleep, open-eyed.
Prentiss turned to the elf. 'Something's wrong with her.'
'She's just in a state of sedation. She'll hear you. Tell her what to do.'
'Blanche!' he called again. 'Bring the container of eggnog and a small glass, will you?'
With no sign of animation other than that of bare movement, Blanche rose and disappeared from view.
'What is eggnog?' asked the elf.
Prentiss attempted enthusiasm. 'It is a compound of milk, sugar and eggs beaten to a delightful consistency. Milk alone is poor staff compared to it.'
Blanche entered with the eggnog. Her pretty face was expressionless. Her eyes turned toward the elf but lightened with no realization of the significance of the sight.
'Here, Jan,' she said, and sat down in the old, leather-covered chair by the window, hands falling loosely to her lap.
Prentiss watched her uneasily for a moment. 'Are you going to keep her here?'
'She'll be easier to control. . . . Well, aren't you going to offer me the eggnog?'
'Oh, sure. Here!'
He poured the thick white liquid into the cocktail glass. He had prepared five milk bottles of it two nights before for the boys of the New York Fantasy Association and it had been mixed with a lavish hand, since fantasy writers notoriously like it so.
The elf's antennae trembled violently.
'A heavenly aroma,' he muttered.
He wrapped the ends of his thin arms about the stem of the small gkss and lifted it to his mouth. The liquid's level sank. When half was gone, he put it down and sighed, 'Oh, the loss to my people. What a creation! What a thing to exist! Our histories tell us that in ancient days an occasional lucky sprite managed to take the place of a man-larva at birth so that he might draw off the liquid fresh-made. I wonder if even those ever experienced anything like this.'
Prentiss said with a touch of professional interest, 'That's the idea behind this business of changelings, is it?'
'Of course. The female man-creature has a great gift. Why not take advantage of it?' The elf turned his eyes upon the rise and fall of Blanche's bosom and sighed again.
Prentiss said (not too eager, now; don't give it away), 'Go ahead. Drink all you want.'
He, too, watched Blanche, waiting for signs of restoring animation, waiting for the beginnings of breakdown in the elf's control.
The elf said, 'When is your larva returning from its place of instruction? I need him.'
'Soon, soon,' said Prentiss nervously. He looked at his wristwatch. Actually, Jan, Junior, would be back, yelling for a slab of cake and milk, in something like fifteen minutes.
'Fill 'er up,' he said urgently. 'Fill 'er up.'
The elf sipped gaily. He said, 'Once the larva arrives, you can go.'
'Go?'
'Only to the library. You'll have to get volumes on electronics. I'll need the details on how to build television, telephones, all that. I'll need to have rules on wiring, instructions for constructing vacuum tubes. Details, Pren-tiss, details! We have tremendous tasks ahead of us. Oil drilling, gasoline refining, motors, scientific agriculture. We'll build a new Avalon, you and I. A technical one. A scientific fairyland. We will create a new world.'
'Great!' said Prentiss. 'Here, don't neglect your drink.'
'You see. You are catching fire with the idea,' said the elf. 'And you will be rewarded. You will have a dozen female man-things to yourself.'
Prentiss looked at Blanche automatically. No signs of hearing, but who could tell? He said, 'I'd have no use for female man-th-for women, I mean.'
'Come now,' said the elf censoriously, 'be truthful. You men-things are well known to our folk as lecherous, bestial creatures. Mothers frightened their young for generations by threatening them with men-things. . . . Young, ah!' He lifted the glass of eggnog in the air and said, 'To my own young,' and drained it.
'Fill 'er up,' said Prentiss at once. 'Fill 'er up.'
The elf did so. He said, 'I'll have lots of children. I'll pick out the best of the coleoptresses and breed my line. I'll continue the mutation. Right now I'm the only one, but when we have a dozen or fifty, I'll interbreed them and develop the race of the super-elf. A race of electro-ulp-electronic marvels and infinite future. ... If I could only drink more. Nectar! The original nectar!'
There was the sudden noise of a door being flung open and a young voice calling, 'Mom! Hey, Mom!'
The elf, his glossy eyes a little dimmed, said, 'Then we'll begin to take over the men-things. A few believe already; the rest we will-urp-teach. It will be the old days, but better; a more efficient elfhood, a tighter union.'
Jan, Junior's, voice was closer and tinged with impatience. 'Hey, Mom! Ain't you home?'
Prentiss felt his eyes popping with tension. Blanche sat rigid. The elf's speech was slightly thick, his balance a little unsteady. If Prentiss were going to risk it, now, now was the time.
'Sit back,' said the elf peremptorily. 'You're being foolish. I knew there was alcohol in the eggnog from the moment you thought your ridiculous scheme. You men-things are very shifty. We elves have many proverbs about you. Fortunately, alcohol has little effect upon us. Now if you had tried catnip with just a touch of honey in it ... Ah, here is the larva. How are you, little man-thing?'
The elf sat there, the goblet of eggnog halfway to his mandibles, while
Jan, Junior, stood in the doorway. Jan, Junior's, ten-year-old face was moderately smeared with dirt, his hair was immoderately matted and there was a look of the utmost surprise in his gray eyes. His battered schoolbooks swayed from the end of the strap he held in his hand.
He said, 'Pop! What's the matter with Mom? And-and what's that?'
The elf said to Prentiss, 'Hurry to the library. No time must be lost. You know the books I need.' All trace of incipient drunkenness had left the creature and Prentiss' morale broke. The creature had been playing with him.
Prentiss got up to go.
The elf said, 'And nothing human; nothing sneaky; no tricks. Your wife is still a hostage. I can use the larva's mind to kill her; it's good enough for that. I wouldn't want to do it. I'm a member of the Elfitarian Ethical Society and we advocate considerate treatment of mammals so you may rely on my noble principles // you do as I say.'
Prentiss felt a strong compulsion to leave flooding him. He stumbled toward the door.
Jan, Junior, cried, 'Pop, it can talk! He says he'll kill Mom! Hey, don't go away!'
Prentiss was already out of the room, when he heard the elf say, 'Don't stare at me, larva. I will not harm your mother if you do exactly as I say. I am an elf, a fairy. You know what a fairy is, of course.'
And Prentiss was at the front door when he heard Jan, Junior's, treble raised in wild shouting, followed by scream after scream in Blanche's shuddering soprano.
i The strong, though invisible, elastic that was drawing Prentiss out the house snapped and vanished. He fell backward, righted himself and darted back up the stairs.
Blanche, fairly saturated with quivering life, was backed into a corner, her arms about a weeping Jan, Junior.
On the desk was a collapsed black carapace, covering a nasty smear of pulpiness from which colorless liquid dripped.
Jan, Junior, was sobbing hysterically, 'I hit it. I hit it with my school-books. It was hurting Mom.'
An hour passed and Prentiss felt the world of normality pouring back into the interstices left behind by the creature from Avalon. The elf itself was already ash in the incinerator behind the house and the only remnant of its existence was the damp stain at the foot of his desk.
Blanche was still sickly pale. They talked in whispers.
Prentiss said, 'How's Jan, Junior?'
'He's watching television.'
'Is he all right?'
'Oh, he's all right, but /'// be having nightmares for weeks.'
'I know. So will I unless we can get it out of our minds. I don't think there'll ever be another of those-things here.'
Blanche said, 'I can't explain how awful it was. I kept hearing every word he said, even when I was down in the living room.'
'It was telepathy, you see.'
'1 just couldn't move. Then, after you left, I could begin to stir a bit. I tried to scream but all I could do was moan and whimper. Then Jan, Junior, smashed him and all at once I was free. I don't understand how it happened.'
Prentiss felt a certain gloomy satisfaction. 'I think I know. I was under his control because I accepted the truth of his existence. He held you in check through me. When I left the room, increasing distance made it harder to use my mind as a psychic lens and you could begin moving. By the time I reached the front door, the elf thought it was time to switch from my mind to Jan, Junior's. That was his mistake.'
'In what way?' asked Blanche.
